The Local Journalism Project, Young Voices: People (November, 2024)
Early career journalists and fellows supported by the Local Journalism Project learn a lot about in-depth news reporting during their time at the Provincetown Independent. In the process, they tell us, they also learn about the Outer Cape community and the people who make it special. This collection of their work features people you might call “characters” — both over the top and under the radar types. By telling their stories, our talented young writers reintroduce us to our friends and neighbors and invite us all to engage in our community in a deeper way. We offer their work here with thanks to all those whose gifts support this unique local journalism initiative. —Janet Lesniak, Executive Director, the Local Journalism Project
Early career journalists and fellows supported by the Local Journalism Project learn a lot about in-depth news reporting during their time at the Provincetown Independent. In the process, they tell us, they also learn about the Outer Cape community and the people who make it special. This collection of their work features people you might call “characters” — both over the top and under the radar types. By telling their stories, our talented young writers reintroduce us to our friends and neighbors and invite us all to engage in our community in a deeper way. We offer their work here with thanks to all those whose gifts support this unique local journalism initiative. —Janet Lesniak, Executive Director, the Local Journalism Project
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Young Voices:
People
VOL. 3, NOVEMBER 2024
Periodicals Supplement to
the Provincetown
Independent,
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Vol. 3, November 28, 2024
Young Voices:
People
Articles by young writers from the Provincetown Independent
Early career journalists and fellows supported by the Local Journalism Project
learn a lot about in-depth news reporting during their time at the Provincetown
Independent. In the process, they tell us, they also learn about the Outer Cape
community and the people who make it special.
This collection of their work features people you might call “characters” — both over
the top and under the radar types. By telling their stories, our talented young
writers reintroduce us to our friends and neighbors and invite us all to engage in
our community in a deeper way. We offer their work here with thanks to all those
whose gifts support this unique local journalism initiative.
— Janet Lesniak, Executive Director,
the Local Journalism Project
Editor’s note: With this third volume of stories by writers who have joined us early in their careers,
we feel especially grateful for the ways they have looked at some familiar subjects with fresh eyes
and written entertainingly about them. We thank the thirteen young writers represented in this
collection, the senior staff of the Independent who have been their mentors, and the Local Journalism
Project and readers who have so generously supported this effort to engage and appreciate the next
generation of journalists. —Edward Miller
Contents
4
7
Dougie Freeman
Takes a Bow
By Josephine de La Bruyère
(February 4, 2021)
Meet the Man
Who Is Mulching
Duck Harbor
By Sam Pollak
23
26
Peter Cook Tells
Stories to Remember
By Oliver Egger
(June 22, 2023)
Behind the
Scenes at the
Portuguese Festival
By Emma Madgic
38
40
Fail Gail
By (Saskia) Max(well) Keller
(September 10, 2020)
As Long as There’s
No Wind, Kenny
Dutra Flies
By Sophie Mann-Shafir
(September 21, 2023)
10
13
16
19
(April 13, 2023)
The Gospel
According to Suede
By Amelia Roth-Dishy
(August 17, 2023)
An Eastham Farmer
Tends the Future of
His Fields
By Isabelle Nobili
(July 7, 2022)
Dina Martina
Is in a Good Place
By Paul Sullivan
(June 20, 2024)
Aging Gardeners’
New Favorite Crop:
Cannabis
By Molly Reinmann
29
31
34
(June 23, 2022)
When a Flea
Market Find Is a
New Direction
By Paul Sullivan
(July 15, 2021)
Ngina Lythcott Is
This Year’s Tim
McCarthy Human
Rights Champion
By Aden Choate
(December 14, 2023)
Roaming Trails
and Beaches and
Finding Freedom
on Horseback
By Jack Styler
(May 2, 2024)
43
46
48
Matty Dread Is an
‘Ambassador of Love’
By Aden Choate
(April 11, 2024)
On and Off the
Lifeguards’ Chair at
Herring Cove Beach
By Jacob Smollen
(August 8, 2024)
On July 4, Joseph
Pellegrino Turns 100
By Amelia Roth-Dishy
(July 6, 2023)
(August 1, 2024)
On the cover: Red Dance (2016) by Bob Henry,
oil on Hypro, 18 x 24 in.; courtesy BHA Gallery
4 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
PIZZAZZ
Dougie Freeman Takes a Bow
He’s selling, but with no plans to stop finding beauty in everyone
By Josephine de La Bruyère
PROVINCETOWN —
Long story short: Dougie
Freeman, who since
1982 has cut, colored,
and charmed the Outer
Cape, who was,
he says, once young
and gorgeous and 127
pounds and now, at 68,
is spray-tanned, arthritic,
still known for his
legs (get that in there:
fabulous legs), who at
17 fled Newton for Boston,
where he balanced
cocktails on a cork tray
on his fingertips, which
reminds him that waiters
used to have such
style, such pizzazz —
what was the question?
Dougie Freeman,
who got his start in
beauty from a man
with a gold Cadillac
(can’t name him; blame
the lawyers), who as a
matter of fact brings
up Cadillacs eight
times in an 87-minute
stretch, who says he
has done everything
in life he wanted to,
namely: had fabulous
love affairs and great
possessions and Louis
Vuitton trunks and diamonds
and (listen!)
big precious stones,
and has traveled, and
slept with gorgeous
men who threw flowers
at his feet, and saved
lives, and been interviewed
by the Library
of Congress, which his
press people want him
to mention, and — hold
one second, husband
Jimmy’s calling: “Honey,
I’m doing an interview
and can’t talk unless
it’s life or death.
Is it life or death?”
Dougie Freeman,
who shampooed Julia
Child (head like a
cabbage), who styled
Farrah Fawcett, Holly
Woodlawn, Lily Tomlin,
who never would
have guessed Cunanan
a murderer, and who
will, yes, answer the
question, just two more
minutes, a couple more
clients to list, (this is
important) who had ins
with the mob but would
absolutely never name
names and who, for the
record, has indeed met
Whitey Bulger, promises
to get to the point in
just a bit; he needs to explain,
and set the scene,
and also close this door.
Dougie Freeman,
who in other papers’
ink is “freewheeling”
and “outrageous,” adjectives
which at once
describe him perfectly
and do him no justice
at all, who in three
hours answers three
questions and asks himself
12, spent two years
making this decision,
which he knows is big,
big news.
Dougie Freeman —
who speaks with no
hint of plot or punctuation,
who is infinitely
quotable and knows it,
who promises to but
does not and should
never keep a long
story short — is, after
39 years, selling his
West End Salon.
Dougie opened the
West End Salon on Aug.
2, 1982, after a deal
that — in his telling —
involved Boston’s top
criminal defense attorney
(first name Jeffrey,
straight, gorgeous, but
last name off-limits), an
alcoholic Frenchman
(wildly abusive), the
mob, inheritance fraud
(minor), a woman who
ran off with a stylist,
and one racehorse.
Stories in Dougie’s
hands are fantastic, dizzying,
wildly crafted.
They also — this doesn’t
make them any less of a
delight — largely stray
from the question at
hand. Dougie promises
a story about himself,
then, without fail,
manages to melt away.
The focus is on his
characters (“let me tell
you about” is his refrain)
wrought with
such salacity that one
forgets they have no
business in his answer.
Dougie is, in his own
words, first and foremost
an entertainer.
For a decade, Dougie
slept on the salon’s
floor. A journalist reported
once that he
slept always under
the sinks. Untrue.
(Dougie keeps track
of mistakes.) It was
his ex-Playboy-bunny
roommate who slept
always under the sinks.
She was a lady; Dougie
got the spot beneath the
fan. The Village People
came and played
“Y.M.C.A.,” and Dougie
felt the walls shake.
He installed a stripper
pole (nothing like a
good gimmick); ran his
business like a family
(raising other people’s
children — that’s what
I’ve done); talked his
way onto Bravo (highest
Nielsen-rated episode
of Tabatha’s Salon
Takeover). In 39 years,
he made the West End
Salon a fixture. He is,
himself, an institution.
And in 39 years at the
West End Salon, Dougie
has made people feel
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 5
After 39 years in his Provincetown salon, Dougie Freeman says he is ready for “take two.” (Photo by Josephine de La Bruyère)
beautiful. That is his specialty,
though he wishes
Hollywood were. He
logs onto Zoom, first adjusts
his angle, next announces
that, goodness,
this reporter is pretty.
Dougie finds beauty everywhere,
in spirits and
character — he’s quick
to stress that. But without
fail, Dougie helps
his clients find beauty
in a mirror. There are
rules to his art. People
are seasons and bangs
work for big noses. Thin
faces need width. Fat
faces need height. Dougie’s
stories may dizzy.
His styling inspires.
But now, Dougie
Freeman is 68, and
spending two hours daily
cleaning 1,350 square
feet of waterfront Commercial
Street real estate
is great for his figure,
not for his knees.
His husband needs
care. (For better or for
worse, honey. Remember
those vows.) Swimming
pools and movie
stars, says Dougie, are
coming to Provincetown,
and the West End
Salon — his 401(k), the
building listed at $1.35
million, name, number,
and client list for an extra
$200K, hitting the
market as soon as he
can swing it — is simply
too valuable to be a
beauty salon anymore.
Dougie will keep doing
this — “this” being
a finger-scissor snip —
until the day he dies.
He’ll work for a competitor
or open something
small downtown.
His clients need not
fret. But it’s time, he
says, for a change. He
has been rich and he
has been poor. Being
rich is better. He’ll hire
a personal trainer, and
sing. He’ll write dark,
riveting poetry and fiction
that’s only nominally
fiction. Can you
imagine the stories in
his pocket? He’ll work
on his flamenco. He’ll
fix his teeth.
Long story short:
After 39 years at the
West End Salon, Dougie
Freeman — who needs
some time to get a little
gorgeous before his
photo, who says this
could be old news by
next week — the interview
requests from
Bravo and the Globe
will come — who prefers
to tell and certainly
can tell his story better
than anyone, is letting a
long story end.
Proud to nourish
tomorrow’s
journalists
(508) 487-3627 • www.jeproduce.com
Home Delivery Available
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 7
HERRING RIVER RESTORATION
Meet the Man Who Is Mulching Duck Harbor
The machine is loud but the work is regenerative, says Faun Koplovsky
By Sam Pollak
WELLFLEET — Deep
into the dense brush
of Duck Harbor, a low
rumbling sound reverberates
off the pitch
pines and oak trees. An
enormous yellow machine
munches through
the understory, and
seated in the cab, half
hidden by equipment, a
brawny man with mutton
chops has his hand
on the throttle.
Faun Koplovsky is his
name, and turning trees
into mulch is his game.
The man with the mythical
name is doing the
work that has everyone
talking: the utter obliteration
of 125 acres of
vegetation at Duck Harbor
that was killed in
the great overwash of
December 2020.
“My job is pretty
wild,” Koplovsky said,
perched next to his towering
ProGrind excavator,
whose slogan is “We
eat trees for lunch.”
“I deal with the worst
of the worst a lot of the
time,” Koplovsky said.
“I built my machine to
not have a limit. There’s
no limit to what it can
mulch. I can mulch every
single thing. That’s
what sets me apart
from other folks in the
mulching business.”
Koplovsky was contracted
by the Tennessee-based
nonprofit
Ducks Unlimited, which
received a $2-million
grant from the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service to
manage vegetation removal
at Duck Harbor.
The removal is part of
the Herring River project,
the largest saltwater
marsh restoration project
in Massachusetts
history, which aims to
restore tidal flow and
saltwater habitats in the
1,000-acre estuary.
Koplovsky’s work at
Duck Harbor began in
late January and will
end on April 15 when
the endangered Northern
long-eared bat returns
to the area from
winter hibernation.
Federal and state regulations
prohibit the removal
of trees in known
habitat areas during
bat-roosting season.
But he will be back
in November to finish
what he started. He has
already leveled 50 acres
of salt-poisoned trees
and shrubbery, and he
pulverizes about three
more acres every day,
depending on the size of
the trees. “Machine hydraulics
is what I listen
to all day,” Koplovsky
said. “It’s my music.”
Koplovsky has been
in the game for 20 years,
with over 25,000 hours
of mulching experience,
he estimated. Despite
his expertise, “It never
gets boring. Mulching
trees is just my thing,
I guess.”
Originally from Randolph,
Vt., Koplovsky
said his decision to
enter the industry was
a no-brainer: “I just
saw someone working
on the side of the road
with a tree mulcher
and thought it was
pretty wild.”
He has worked on
projects across the
Northeast, including
trail-clearing in the
Vermont National Forest,
tree-mulching for
Faun Koplovsky next to his ProGrind excavator, which has specialized
components he transported from New Orleans. Koplovsky is the contractor
behind the clear-cutting of Duck Harbor. (Photos by Nancy Bloom)
8 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
prescribed burns
on Long Island, and
brush-masticating in
Mashpee to help restore
New England
cottontail habitat.
“I’m like an earth artist,”
Koplovsky said. “A
lot of what I do is forest
grooming, stump grinding.
I beautify the land.”
But the Duck Harbor
project is a first for him.
“I’m kind of a mountain
goat,” he said. “I’ve never
worked in a saltwater
marsh, so it’s pretty wild
to see the ocean while
I’m mulching trees.”
He added that he
has “never dealt with
so many big dead
trees. These are challenging
trees. They’ve
been struggling their
whole lives to survive,
so they’re very strong,
which makes them
tougher to mulch.”
Because Duck Harbor
was, in fact, a harbor
(and then a salt marsh)
before the Herring River
was diked in 1909,
draining much of the
estuary of salt water,
the area still retains a
swampy topsoil. This
makes it harder for
most machinery to traverse
the basin.
Koplovsky’s excavator
sports two pontoons
on the bottom that have
a ground impact of one
pound per square inch.
“They call it a marsh buggy
undercarriage,” Koplovsky
said. “A floating
excavator is pretty wild.”
A portion of the 125 acres of dead vegetation at Duck Harbor that
Koplovsky is mulching as part of the Herring River Restoration Project.
Officials expect the area will return to a salt marsh.
But you can’t just
get them anywhere, he
said. He went to New
Orleans to buy the pontoons,
and with the help
of a couple of mechanics
and a crane lugged
the 20-by-35-foot machinery
back across
the Mason-Dixon line.
“I now believe I’m the
only guy in the Northeast
with a marsh
buggy undercarriage,”
Koplovsky said.
The machine’s head
is specialized, too. With
a hydraulically powered
rolling drum, its
sharp teeth can masticate
wood with speed
and efficiency.
But despite appearances,
the job isn’t all
about death and destruction.
“It’s regenerative,”
Koplovsky said.
“The whole cool idea
here is that the mulch
goes right back into the
soil, so it’s going to help
build the soil for when
the saltwater marsh
comes in.”
Before the Herring
River was diked in 1909,
Duck Harbor was navigable.
Early settlers
floated building materials
to Bound Brook
Island. But by the late
1800s, the harbor had
“shoaled off” into a
healthy salt marsh.
When the dike was
constructed, berms
and ditches were also
built to drain the marsh
for mosquito control.
Freshwater vegetation
and invasive species
like phragmites then
colonized the area,
turning it into a dense
freshwater wetland.
When a nor’easter
hit the coast in
December 2020, high
tides breached the
already-eroding sand
dunes at Duck Harbor
Beach, and salt water
flowed into the basin,
killing off the freshwater
species there. Since
then, high tides regularly
breach the dunes and
flow into the basin, furthering
the dieback.
Koplovsky’s job is to
remove the dead vegetation
and berms so that
when the dike is opened
tidal flow through the
estuary will reconstitute
Duck Harbor as a
saltwater marsh. Tim
Smith, a restoration
ecologist for the Cape
Cod National Seashore,
said that researchers
saw native salt-marsh
species like cordgrass
arriving last summer
as well as seed banks
and propagules washed
over from the tides. The
removal of dead freshwater
vegetation will
promote the repopulation
of the salt-marsh
understory, Smith said.
“It’s all about restoration,”
Koplovsky
said, looking out at the
vast expanse of open
land where just a few
months ago a mass of
dead trees stood — and
many years before that,
where a salt marsh
sprouted cordgrass
and where herring
spawned. Sometime in
the future, with the help
of Koplovsky and his
giant machine, it could
look like that again.
“It’s pretty wild,”
Koplovsky said.
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 9
Introducing the all new Provincetown.com
Celebrating local businesses, local art, and local stories.
10 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
MUSICIANS
The Gospel According to Suede
An Outer Cape legend has learned to get out of her own way
By Amelia Roth-Dishy
Suede the fabric is a
velvety, pliable kind of
leather made from the
underside of animal
skin.
But Suede the musician
is not so easily
defined. An independent
artist through and
through, she’s explored
the worlds of jazz,
blues, folk, and even
comedy for more than
40 years. But the singer
and multi-instrumentalist,
whose irresistible
live shows on the jazz
club circuit have won
her legions of loyal fans,
thinks of herself mainly
as a “song stylist.”
“Any piece of music
that calls to me, I
will put my spin on it,”
Suede says.
The Wellfleet resident
will bring her
signature stylings and
dulcet pipes to her one
show here this summer,
her debut at the Payomet
Performing Arts
Center on Aug. 21.
She was born in
Nyack, N.Y. and her given
first name is Suzanne.
“Suede is my middle
name,” she says. “It’s
what I’ve gone by since
I was about 10 years
old. People assume it’s
some clever stage name
I made up. Nope.”
From a young age, she
loved tinkering with instruments.
She’s entirely
self-taught and plays the
guitar, piano, and trumpet
at her shows, “and
many other instruments
I wouldn’t ask anybody
to buy a ticket for” on
her own time.
“I remember thinking
this is exactly what I
wanted to do,” she says.
“It was either that or be
a veterinarian.”
The family eventually
landed in Annapolis,
Md. Suede attended
Wartburg College in
Iowa but returned east
when she graduated and
started out as a street
performer in Baltimore
Harbor, collecting tips
in her guitar case. She
also landed a sales job
at the Harmony Hut in
Laurel, Md., which she
was so good at that the
suits soon fast-tracked
her for corporate headquarters.
“I said, ‘Uh! This is
my two weeks’ notice,’ ”
Suede recalls. “I’m not
going to get comfortable
with a paycheck. I
came back here to make
my career happen.” She
started to build relationships
with the clubs
and bars in Maryland
and Virginia, growing
a fanbase organically
through word of mouth
and distributing her
music through her own
Easily Suede Music
record label.
The gospel of Suede
has broken into the
mainstream at various
points, like with “Emily
Remembers,” a 1995
song written by Shirley
Eikhard that raised
awareness of Alzheimer’s
disease. Suede
took it to new heights
on her 2001 album
On the Day We Met.
For those in the
know, the real gospel is
a Suede live show. Channeling
classic broads as
well as smooth crooners,
Duran Duran, and
Dylan, Suede can break
out a laugh line one
minute and a trumpet
solo the next. Her natural
rapport with audiences
used to help cover
up a persistent case of
imposter syndrome as
a self-taught performer.
“I grew up with this
horrible fraud conversation:
it’s a good thing
I’m funny because once
people realize that I
don’t know what I’m doing,
they’re going to be
really ticked off at me,”
she says. But with “40
years of therapy” and a
well of pure conviction,
the self-described “big,
sensitive mush” says,
“I have finally gotten out
of my way, you know?
Which just brings much
greater comfort and
playfulness onstage
and in the music — and
more connection.”
Responding to
Suede’s authenticity,
audiences get in on
the action. “There are
certain songs that I absolutely
have to put in
the show or people will
start throwing things,”
she says. Wary of getting
pigeonholed as a
standards singer, she
used to avoid covers of
songs she loved. “But
then I would kill ‘Over
the Rainbow.’ I could
so make ‘Hallelujah’
work. And now, that’s
one of my most requested
songs. Everybody’s
singing, and it’s church.
Why wouldn’t you do
that if you have the
opportunity?”
An out lesbian since
the beginning of her career,
Suede first played
Provincetown in the
summer of 1985 with
Michael Greer, with
whom she had done a
New Year’s Eve show in
Washington, D.C. “I was
a little baby,” she says.
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 11
Trumpet in hand, Suede speaks to her audience at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady, N.Y. on April 23, 2022.
(Photo by Brad Fowler)
The two put together a
music and comedy revue
for a summer-long
slot at the Gifford
House. “As soon as I got
up here, I thought, oh
my god. I need to figure
out how to have this be
my home base.”
Thirty years ago, she
landed a rental in Wellfleet.
The artist tradition
of moving from a
gorgeous winter spot
on the water in Provincetown
to “behind
somebody’s garage” for
the high season seemed
too difficult with all her
instruments and CDs.
She eventually bought
the place. “I’m one of
those lucky stories,”
she says.
Suede says she’s never
been “radical” about
her queerness. “But I
just felt that it was so
important to be honest
about who I am,”
she says. In part, she
moved here in search
of nonchalance around
sexuality. “I wanted to
be someplace where
nobody was ever going
to say, ‘Do you have a
husband? Do you have
a boyfriend?’ It wasn’t
a radical choice, like,
oh, I’m going to go
live in queer land. We
just all want it to be a
non-issue, right?”
Suede does “absolutely”
think that being
an out queer artist was
a factor in what doors
were opened for her,
but she wouldn’t have
had it any other way.
And musical independence,
though difficult,
was also a luxury. “I
never had anybody telling
me you’ve got to fix
your hair like this,” she
says. “You can’t wear
that onstage. Don’t talk
about that onstage. It
truly has been my work
as I want to express it.
“It can be a brutal,
brutal business, but
I’ve been able to stay
true to who I am and
make my own choices
around all of that,”
she adds.
That includes mainstream
spaces as well as
the women’s music circuit,
where she found
early success and community
but also chafed
under well-meaning attempts
at drawing battle
lines, like objections
to her wearing makeup
onstage. “Facial expressions
are important in
what I do, and I want
you to be able to see
them,” she says.
After decades of
touring through the offseason
and playing Provincetown
gigs all summer,
Suede has “slowed
down a bit” by choice
recently, a privilege of
being your own boss.
“I’m playing the places
I really want to be
playing,” she says. The
one-night-only concert
at Payomet is a “perfect
example,” she says. In
Truro, she’ll be incorporating
new material
into her classic set
alongside Fred Boyle,
her pianist for the past
15 years.
With a slate of shows
on deck this fall, Suede
is gearing up for more
extensive touring. After
40 years in the business,
she knows how to
take expert care of her
most important instrument
and avoids loud
restaurants when a
show is coming up.
A few years ago, on
the morning of two
back-to-back sold-out
bookings at Scullers
Jazz Club in Boston,
Suede woke up with
laryngitis. Somehow,
through sheer force of
will, she made it work.
To this day, fans tell her
those were their favorite
shows.
“The show comes
from within,” she says.
“It’s about your heart. If
you got the good pipes,
too, like I do, great.
But it’s really about
your heart.”
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Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 13
Wells instructs Eastham Elementary fourth-graders in turnip planting. (Photos by Isabelle Nobili)
COMMON GROUND
An Eastham Farmer Tends
the Future of His Fields
Bob Wells finds ways to build up the soil and share his land
By Isabelle Nobili
EASTHAM — The 15
fourth-grade students
from Mrs. Howard’s class
at Eastham Elementary
School marched across
the street to Redberry
Farm on the morning
of June 21. There, they
met farmer Bob Wells to
plant Eastham turnips
— as the town’s fourthgraders
have done for
the last five years.
This tradition is one
of many ways Wells
shares his land. “The
way I look at this piece
of ground out here is
that it was a gift from
God, literally handed to
me,” said Wells of his
five-acre plot. “I don’t
even think of it as being
mine. I think, ‘How can
I use this to benefit the
most people?’ ”
Students gathered
early on that Tuesday
morning in the future
turnip field and listened
as Wells explained
the task at hand. Five
straight rows were
marked by taut lines of
string, staked at each
end to provide a visual
guide for planting. In
pairs, the children dug
10 holes each, spaced
18 inches apart along
the lines. Some students
used trowels and others
their hands as they settled
their seedlings into
holes that strayed only
a little here and there
from the straight lines.
“Try to think like a
plant,” Wells said to
the students as they removed
rocks and sticks
from the soil. “What
sort of conditions would
you want to grow in?”
To introduce experimentation
and to
improve those conditions,
students added
handfuls of biochar, a
charcoal-like soil
amendment made onsite
by Wells, to the first
five holes of every row.
Wells explained that
biochar, made from
burning biomass, both
restores carbon and
offers adsorptive properties
that better store
microorganisms and
beneficial nutrients in
the soil.
A few rows over, another
collaboration is
underway. This season,
Wells is renting fields
to James Rosato and
Laura Howes of Dirt
Farm Co. Rosato and
Howes have farmed on
a 3,500-square-foot plot
at Putnam Farm in Orleans
for the past three
years, but they are beginning
to outgrow it.
“There are a lot of
young people who
would love to grow
their farm and don’t
have space to do it,”
Wells said. “If I am too
busy with biochar and
I’m not planting that
field, there’s somebody
else that can use it.”
Howes and Rosato,
both residents of Orleans,
are grateful for
the chance to expand
to Wells’s land. “It is
so hard to find land on
Cape Cod,” said Howes.
On roughly one acre
at Redberry Farm, Dirt
Farm Co. is growing
a range of root crops
this season, including,
14 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
of course, the Eastham
turnip. Farmers Jared
Kimler and Brian Tingley
grew Eastham turnips
on Wells’s land last
year, working it as Howes
and Rosato are now.
“If we are going to
have a local food system,”
Rosato said, “community
space is the
solution.”
Bob and Connie Wells
purchased the land,
which lies adjacent to
their Eastham house,
in 2005. It was densely
overrun with brambles,
vines, and multiflora
rose — a seemingly unlikely
place for a farm.
Bob Wells, however,
had a vision. “I always
have too much vision,”
he said. “I thought,
‘I’m gonna grow stuff
out there.’ ”
After months of
stump-pulling and
brush-clearing, a plot of
blueberries was planted.
“It very quickly became
obvious that the
soil here is terrible,”
said Wells. “And that I
was a complete fool to
base my life on growing
things in it.”
But he didn’t give
up. Instead, he began
collecting organic matter,
including fertilizerfree
grass clippings,
oak leaves, dead fish
and lobster, and food
waste, to establish compost
piles. The Eastham
Transfer Station proved
a valuable source of
material early on. Grad
Bob Wells in his biochar retort-building workshop on Holmes Road.
Wells instructs Eastham Elementary fourth-graders in turnip planting.
ually, Wells developed
other “symbiotic relationships”
with people
who supply him with
nutrient-dense materials
that, once composted,
enrich the sandy
soil. By sourcing organic
matter only from the
surrounding area, the
quality of the soil is
improved both sustainably
and economically.
Meanwhile, Wells
continued his research
into what makes for
healthy soils. “Whenever
I take on a task,”
Wells said, “I buy a lot
of books and study it
as in-depth as I can.
It’s always fun learning
something new.”
He read about the
origins of biochar
and how creating and
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 15
using it originated in
the Amazon basin.
There, indigenous peoples
added charcoal to
the soil to create a rich,
black loam known as
terra preta.
Wells designed and
built a small retort —
imagine a low-oxygen
kiln — to create this
biochar and brought it
to friends at the Orleans
Farmers’ Market,
where, at the time, he
sold his crops each Saturday.
Farmers asked
for more, and soon he
found himself teaching
others how to make it
and designing more
and larger retorts.
Wells said that he
never expected to create
a biochar industry
on Cape Cod. But he
founded New England
Biochar in 2009. The
company, run by Wells
with one partner, Ryan
Sverid of Eastham, has
shipped biochar-making
machines nationwide
and even overseas.
Working from Wells’s
workshop on Holmes
Road in Eastham, he
and Sverid design and
construct nearly every
component of each
system from scratch.
Though the business
has grown, Wells says
that he is not motivated
by money. “I’m just
not that way,” he said.
“I really look at what I
do from the standpoint
of helping the world.
I want to do what’s
best for everybody, not
just me.”
For Wells, this means
educating and enabling
others to create and
use biochar where they
live. “The machines,
we ship globally,” said
Wells. “But it’s the opposite
with the biochar
itself,” which he sells
only close to home.
“My philosophy has
always been, especially
if you’re talking about
carbon footprint, that
you don’t make something
in your back yard
and ship it to New Jersey,
much less Taiwan,”
he said. “You make it
here and use it here.”
Come fall, the fourthgrade
class will return
to the rows they planted
to dig the Eastham
turnips and to check
on the difference in
growth patterns between
plants that got
biochar and plants that
didn’t. Wells and Connie
will help students
weigh and record the
harvest — so there
will be a lesson in data
collection, too.
“Everything goes
into it,” Wells said of
the students’ project.
“History, science, botany,
biology, math.” The
kids, he adds, have a lot
of fun doing it, “and I
have a lot of fun doing
it with them.”
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16 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
DRAG DESK
Dina Martina Is in a Good Place
In her 20th Provincetown season, a rebel imparts an absurd brand of happiness
By Paul Sullivan
Dina Martina says she
was born nine months
early. “I looked like a
poached egg,” she confides.
Her grandmother
looks just like Colonel
Sanders. “Beautiful, hirsute
lady,” says Martina.
“She was an unsuccessful
wet nurse.” Her late
mother was a cocktail
waitress who, above all
else, loved meat. When
she died, Arby’s dimmed
their lights.
As for Martina, she’s
been an entertainer her
whole life, if not longer.
Despite everything,
her daughter loves
her. Martina says she’s
wearing her daughter’s
“goiter” as a bracelet:
it’s beautiful, right?
She’s pious, a polytheist
— her favorite is the
Greek god “Dialysis.”
He regularly appears in
her dreams.
Speaking of sleep, before
bed, Martina drinks
a tall glass of warm
tequila. It really helps:
she sleeps like a baby
who just drank tequila.
Her favorite drink,
though, is a whiskey and
Coke. To make one: Fill
a glass with ice, pour
some whiskey, some
more, yes, even more,
just another splash or
two or three. Oh, you’ve
already poured this
much, why not top it off?
Don’t forget the cola —
grab your pipette, the
one you keep handy on
your bar cart, and squirt
a few droplets into the
glass. There you have
it, a whiskey and Coke.
Delicious, no?
Martina loves to perform.
The pleasure is
hers, and you can’t have
it. She could have done
it without you, but she
wouldn’t have wanted
to. “I could not have
asked for a better life,”
she says. She’s witchy
and twitchy and manic,
but she’s alive. Dina
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 17
Martina, it’s clear to everyone
in the audience
of her drag show, “The
Comparable Miss Dina
Martina,” is in a very
good place right now.
It’s Martina’s 20th
season in Provincetown,
and she’s thrilled
to be back at the Crown
& Anchor, where the
1889 Paris Exposition
and 1964 New York
World’s Fair took place.
If it seems like the Eiffel
Tower is too tall to fit in
this room, well, it was
much younger back
then and had a late
growth spurt. This room
is hallowed ground, but
you should really go
next door to the Vault,
where the Mayflower
Compact was signed
after the Pilgrims
arrived from Mars.
The Crown & Anchor
is still a place of import
— Martina’s contract
stipulates she has to
get that in there. And
she needs to talk about
the food. “So, I came up
with this,” Martina says.
“The food here is restaurant-quality.”
If you don’t believe
Martina is finally happy,
just listen to her sing
and watch her dance.
The choreography is
maybe a little more
than she bargained for,
but she’s exultant. Her
covers of Lizzo’s “About
Damn Time” and Sophie
Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder
on the Dancefloor”
throw into question
It’s Dina Martina’s 20th season in Provincetown. (Photo courtesy Dina
Martina)
the value of being true
to the original. Fidelity
is passé. Strike out on
your own.
Martina has the
chops not just for a
one-woman show but
for a one-woman life.
“I love being single,”
she declares, arms cast
wide. She tried to return
to dating, but it
didn’t work out: “Not
only did the guy not like
NPR,” she says, “he hated
NPR.” Martina can’t
get through a day without
listening to her favorite
NPR show, “Wait
Wait … Don’t Touch
Me!” Another guy gifted
her a cupcake. “Nothing
but a gay muffin,” she
spits out. Her mother,
to whom much of the
show is an homage,
taught her that.
Another piece of
advice her mother dispensed
before she died
but after she passed
away: never skimp on
toilet paper or prostitutes.
“You get what you
pay for,” Martina says.
“My mother, she was
right about everything.”
Martina is overheating.
She runs backstage
for a paper towel, dabs
her face, crumples it up
in her hand, and there
it remains for the rest
of the show. “It’s not
sweat,” Martina informs
the audience. “It’s residual
me.” Her hair freshly
out of rollers, her
eyeshadow and lipstick
layered on so thick you
can see her from Wellfleet,
her blouse barely
fitting over her stomach,
her three brooches
catching the light, Martina
looks beautiful, if
only because she says
so. Halfway through the
show, an outfit change:
a dress with a slit that
runs past the navel.
She takes a sip of
water. “Bleh,” she grimaces.
“Water from a
can.” That’s the price of
Provincetown, which
you’ve been pronouncing
wrong, by the way.
It’s “Provence-town.”
There, isn’t that more
dignified?
Other words you’re
pronouncing wrong:
it’s not “character,” it’s
“chair-actor”; it’s not
“genre,” it’s “gonorrhea”;
“February” is actually
“Feh-brewery” and it’s
“Sep-tem-bra,” “Oct-ahbra,”
and “Novem-bra”;
“Google” is “Joogle”;
“unique” is actually pronounced
“eunuch.”
You’ve also been using
microphones wrong
your whole life: you
should breathe as loudly
as possible into them,
and you should be flopping
them side to side
with your wrist. A microphone
should either be
held at arm’s length from
your mouth or practically
inside it, but never
anywhere in between.
There’s plenty more, but
go see Martina, and you,
too, can be edified.
It’s true: Dina Martina
is in a good place
right now, but that
doesn’t mean she’s lost
her rebellious streak.
She’s still raging against
the norms, tearing civilization
apart one mispronunciation
at a time,
and building it into
something more beautiful,
if a little askew.
Don’t be confused. Martina
is still a renegade.
After all, the most iconoclastic
thing you can be
nowadays is happy.
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Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 19
Older Outer Cape cannabis afficionados seem to favor homegrown, and some have become experts at the
nuances of cultivating the plants. (Photos by Emily Schiffer)
HOMEGROWN
Aging Gardeners’ New Favorite
Crop: Cannabis
Elders find fun, community, and pain relief in growing and
smoking weed
By Molly Reinmann
WELLFLEET — The
Outer Cape is full of
children of the ’60s.
Some of those who have
green thumbs have
found in their home
gardens a new way of
reconnecting with their
roots: by growing their
own marijuana.
Some are passionate
gardeners who see pot
as another plant to add
to their catalog. Some
want easy access to marijuana
for pain relief.
Some give their crop to
friends and family. Some
just enjoy the stuff.
“Growing it is sort
of your connection to
the earth, and there’s
a mental satisfaction
that comes from that
that is different from
when you just walk
into a dispensary and
buy the product,” says
Mike Fee, a retired lawyer
who grows his own
cannabis in Truro.
The popularity of
homegrown here does
not seem to have had
an effect on dispensary
sales, according to Zachary
Ment, owner of the
Piping Plover, a cannabis
shop in Wellfleet.
“People can easily ferment
beer in their basements,
but that doesn’t
necessarily hurt liquor
or beer sales,” Ment
says. “Everyone grows
tomatoes out here, but
the supermarkets still
seem to sell a lot.”
In fact, Ment is all for
his neighbors’ hobby.
The uptick in seniors
growing their own pot
helps destigmatize the
herb, he says. As more
retired people grow pot
and share it with their
friends, the number of
those interested in the
product goes up.
Ment says that in the
three years since the
Piping Plover opened,
he has seen a softening
of biases against
marijuana among older
customers. About 20
percent of the people
who come to his shop —
between 2,000 and 3,000
per year — are over age
65, he says. “The stereotype
that old people
don’t like pot is just not
true anymore.”
Wil Sullivan of Wellfleet
rediscovered marijuana
upon his retirement
from a career as
a lawyer and began
growing his own shortly
after Massachusetts
legalized home cultivation
in 2018.
Now, he says, he probably
smokes six times
a week, almost always
partaking from his own
garden. While a lot of
his friends — nearly all
of whom get their weed
from him — smoke for
medicinal reasons, Sullivan
dabbles with marijuana
strictly for fun.
Wellfleet artist and
former select board
member Helen Miranda
Wilson is one of the medicinally
inclined. She
says she rarely smokes
recreationally, but she
20 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
started growing pot because
she was suffering
from severe hip pain
and wanted easy access
to cannabis for relief.
Wilson says she has not
grown marijuana since
she got her hip fixed in
late 2019.
Wilson wanted to
grow her own not only
because she loves to
garden but also because
she wanted to know exactly
where her pot was
coming from.
“I always want to
be really sure that the
stuff I am taking into
my body has not had
any pesticides used
on it,” she says, adding
that she has never
purchased marijuana
from a dispensary or
anywhere else. Many
senior smokers the Independent
interviewed
for this story said they
prefer homegrown pot
to the store-bought kind
because they know exactly
what is in it.
According to the
Cannabis Control Commission,
the use of registered
pesticides on
cannabis is prohibited
by both federal and
state law. Only 25b Minimum
Risk pesticides
are permitted for use on
Massachusetts crops.
An exception to the
aversion to shops that
many elders noted:
some do visit dispensaries
to buy edibles.
Ment says that edibles
are the most popular
Wil Sullivan always keeps two jars of his Wellfleet Weed in the car in case he sees a friend coming down the
street. “I roll down my window and give them a jar,” he says.
purchases among his
older customers.
The Joy of Gardening
Bucky Johns of Wellfleet
loves smoking pot.
But he has grown vegetables
his whole life and
says there are few joys
greater than a good harvest.
His cannabis harvest
is no different.
“It’s sort of like when
you get the perfect
tomato,” he says.
Fee has also always
been an avid gardener.
While he does smoke
once or twice a week, he
says, he grows the plant
mainly as an exercise in
horticulture.
“There are nuances
to doing it correctly,”
says Fee. “I think growing
your own is sort of
a niche for folks like
me who have the time,
and the space, and the
inclination.
“I know plenty of
folks who don’t have
a green thumb and
couldn’t care less about
gardening, but they still
want to get high,” he
adds. “They go to the
dispensary religiously.”
The pot growing process
is demanding and
requires more attention
than other plants,
Johns says. But that
doesn’t bother him.
“I spent my career in
manufacturing, and
that’s really what this
is,” he says. Johns currently
tends four plants
on a deck on the second
floor of his home.
The wet, warm climate
of the Outer Cape
makes marijuana plants
particularly prone to
mildew, Fee says, so
home cultivators need to
know a lot and give the
plants extra attention.
“But it’s really quite
cool to learn all of these
tricks about soil and genomes,”
says Fee, noting
that he learns most
of his gardening skills
from a community
farming group. “There’s
a lot to it.”
Fee currently has
three marijuana plants
growing in the sun outside
his house and two
that he keeps inside under
a light. The plants
are roughly five feet tall,
but he says they could
easily grow to eight
feet. Taller plants don’t
necessarily mean more
buds, though, Fee says
— he puts metal posts
and netting around
his plants to help them
grow out instead of up.
“You don’t want to
grow a Christmas tree,”
he says. “You don’t
want to have to get on
a ladder.”
Unlike Fee and Johns,
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 21
Sullivan never considered
himself much of
a gardener before he
started growing cannabis
in 2018.
“My first plant was
horrific looking,” he
says. “But once the
plants catch hold, they
just fly.”
Sullivan says he
learned how to grow
from friends who
garden — both those
who have marijuana in
their gardens and those
who don’t. “But most
of them do,” he says.
Currently, Sullivan has
six marijuana plants
in progress. He will begin
harvesting in early
September.
Each year, Sullivan
invites over a group of
friends to celebrate the
harvest. The group —
usually four or five men,
but sometimes more, he
says — sit on his front
porch and pick the buds
off the plants before
storing them in jars.
Giving It Away
Massachusetts state
guidelines dictate that
a residence with more
than one of-age individual
may grow up
to 12 cannabis plants
at home. When grown
properly, even the six
plants that Sullivan
grows produce far too
much pot for a single
household to consume.
As a result, many home
growers must give away
much of their crops.
Johns estimates that
he gives away 60 percent
of his marijuana
each year; for Fee, the
number is closer to 75
percent. Recipients are
usually family members
and close friends.
For Sullivan, giving
his pot away is his
favorite part of the
whole endeavor.
“When I rediscovered
smoking in my later
years, what I really
rediscovered was the
enjoyment of giving it
away,” he says.
Sullivan distributes
his product in jars,
which he adorns with
custom-made labels —
circular blue and green
stickers that say “Wellfleet
Weed.”
The recipients of his
jars are many, he says.
The circle started as a
group of close friends
but has grown to include
local businesspeople
and community
leaders, he says, like
the owner and employees
of a local restaurant
who enjoy the occasional
smoke. The endeavor
has instilled in Sullivan
a new sense of connection
to his Wellfleet
community.
“A friend of mine
joked, ‘You should run
for select board,’ ” he
says. “ ‘You’d win in a
landslide.’ ”
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Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 23
PORTUGUESE FESTIVAL
Peter Cook Tells
Stories to Remember
Keeping a Provincetown heritage alive,
one story at a time
By Oliver Egger
Fishing hundreds of
miles off the coast of
Provincetown in 1979,
the F/V Little Infant
was caught in a raging
tempest. Peter Cook, a
crewman on the 90-foot
scalloper, could see only
one other boat out there,
the F/V Leland J. “That
boat got in trouble,”
says Cook, “and started
taking on water.”
The Little Infant’s
crew watched the other
boat sink, “and then,”
Cook continues, “we
picked six guys out of
the life raft. Once the six
men were on board our
boat, I walked into the
wheelhouse and Captain
Adams said, ‘Well, Pedro,
that went well. How are
those men?’ He always
called me Pedro. And I
said, ‘They are shaken
up but lucky to be alive,
thanks to you.’ He pointed
out the window and
said, ‘Take a look out
there. I’ll bet you never
saw anything like that
before.’ And the other
boat had turned bottoms
up and was upside
down, drifting away.
And I said, ‘No, I never
did, George.’ And he
said, ‘Well, that’s a story
you can tell your grandchildren
someday.’ So,
I wrote the story.”
That story from
Cook’s fishing days
was then featured in
the 2023 Provincetown
Portuguese Festival
book and retold at the
Portuguese Writers and
Poets reading at the
Crown & Anchor.
Cook, 78, is a writer,
a filmmaker, a retired
fisherman and auto
mechanic, and a thirdgeneration
Provincetown
native. In 1872,
Cook’s then 16-year-old
grandparents arrived in
Provincetown from the
Azores, the archipelago
of volcanic islands in
the Atlantic nearly 900
miles west of Portugal.
Cook was born in 1945
in his uncle’s house
on the corner of Court
and Cudworth streets.
That same year, his father
bought a house on
Mechanic Street in the
West End, and Cook has
lived there ever since.
“I grew up there,”
he says. “Then I lived
upstairs with my young
family. I took care of my
Peter Cook at the Provincetown Commons with his notes and a copy of
his 2012 film, Dad I Wanna Go Fishin’. (Photo by Nancy Silva)
parents there, and when
they passed, I took over
the downstairs, and I
have a son that lives
upstairs. We’re deeprooted
in Provincetown.”
Cook is currently
writing the story of his
family’s passage from
the Azores. In his older
age, he says, he has
become more dedicated
to illuminating this
family history.
“I take care of the
family plot at the cemetery:
grandpa, grandma,
my parents, and
some of my aunts and
uncles,” he says. “When
I’m there thinking and
praying and looking at
the stones, I’m thinking
of the family and
I’m saying, ‘There’s got
to be so much more
to this story than this
place.’ So, I’ve tracked
it back.” Writing stories
has brought that history
to life. “Numbers
and names on paper are
bland,” says Cook. “But
if you tell it in a story,
it has a lot more substance
and meaning.”
Cook founded a writer’s
group that meets
every Tuesday at the
Provincetown Commons.
24 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
Cook in 1979, when he was a fisherman and engineer on the F/V Little
Infant, with his young son, Peter. (Photo courtesy Peter Cook)
Cook and his cousin Avis in the 1950s. (Photo courtesy Peter Cook)
The purpose of the
group, made up of
people who grew up
in Provincetown, is to
write their memories.
Together, they keep
their histories from
vanishing.
“There are so many
streets in Provincetown
that have only
one or two real locals,”
says Cook. He means
people who were born
and raised in Provincetown.
“Our history in
Provincetown, as far as
Portuguese ancestry, is
disappearing. And unfortunately,
the blessing
of the fleet is getting
smaller and smaller
each year. Soon it won’t
be anymore. The handwriting
is on the wall,
so I think it’s important
that we get our stories
out. I tell my writing
group, ‘If we don’t write
this stuff down, who’s
going to write it?’ ”
Writing isn’t the only
way Cook has told the
stories of his family in
Provincetown. With
Paul de Ruyter, he produced
and directed
the film Dad I Wanna
Go Fishin’, which premiered
at the Provincetown
International Film
Festival in June 2012.
The film includes footage
taken by Cook, his
father, and his brother.
They capture the images
and sounds of commercial
fishing on the
F/V Little Infant in the
1950s, ’60s, and ’70s.
In the film’s narration,
Cook says, “We
were fishermen. We
worked hard; we loved
it; we hated it. The romance
ends when you
leave the dock. That’s
the way it is. It’s in
the blood.”
This fall, Cook will
travel to the Azores
to see for the first
time the village of São
Pedro on the south coast
of São Miguel Island,
where his grandparents
are from. He knows of
places there that hold
his history: the church
that his family attended
and the birthplaces
of his grandmother and
grandfather.
“As I like to say, I’m
going ahead through
the days and back
through the years,”
says Cook.
Cook remains an engaged
member of his
family and the Provincetown
community,
but he finds solace in
the past, writing and
sharing it.
“I live my life for
my wife and my grandchildren,”
he says. He
moves forward, but in
his mind and heart and
soul, he says, he goes
back through time.
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 25
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26 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
LOCAL HISTORY
Behind the Scenes
at the Portuguese Festival
Beverley Ferreira has always been one to help
Provincetown ‘share the heritage’
By Emma Madgic
PROVINCETOWN —
Beverley Ferreira is
known as “Grandma”
by her coworkers at
the Lobster Pot, where
she has been working
as a hostess since 2013.
Ferreira, who turned 81
last week, has no intention
of leaving anytime
soon. “As long as I’m
healthy enough, I’ll be
there,” she says.
That’s a good thing,
says Rita Speicher, who
has been manager of
this Commercial Street
institution for 29 years.
“She’s a presence that
cannot be duplicated.”
Born Beverley Cook
in Provincetown in
1941, she has never
lived anywhere else.
She did contemplate
leaving once, though,
during her senior year
at Provincetown High
School, when she was
offered a job at the Pentagon
in Washington,
D.C. But then her boyfriend,
Gordon Ferreira,
gave her a diamond ring
and asked her to stay. “I
didn’t think twice about
it,” says Beverley.
Less than a year later,
in 1960, the pair were
married and moved
into a little apartment
on Mechanic Street.
While Gordon went to
work with his father
(Jesse “Burr” Ferreira
was the proprietor of
Burr’s Barber Shop),
Beverley started out at
her sister Eva’s restaurant,
Tip for Tops’n.
In 1973, Beverley and
Gordon bought Stormy
Harbor, a “mostly American”
restaurant at 277
Commercial St. — just
across Lopes Square
and about a block
west of where she now
works. Although they
kept the restaurant’s
name, they changed
the menu to feature a
selection of Portuguese
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Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 27
recipes handed down
from Beverley’s and
Gordon’s families. What
everybody loved best,
she says, was their
squid stew.
Life at Stormy Harbor
was busy. “Gordon
ran the back, and I ran
the front,” Ferreira says.
“And in between, when
the sandwich girl didn’t
show up, I was making
sandwiches. When
the bartender didn’t
show up, I was making
drinks. When you own
the place, you gotta do
everything.”
The couple held various
fundraisers at the
restaurant, especially to
raise money for scholarships
for the kids, she
says. When the Knights
of Columbus held their
events, she remembers,
the “men would wait on
the tables.”
According to Tracey
Rose, Ferreira’s second
child, her mother’s community-minded
ways
extended to her home
life. Ferreira encouraged
her kids to invite
their friends over for
pajama parties and
Friday-night sleepovers
when she was growing
up, Rose says.
Ferreira also went
to community events
hosted by others: “My
mom and dad would
go down to the Holiday
Inn,” says Rose. “They’d
go out dancing and then
have breakfast at my
mother’s house.
Beverley Ferreira at her post at the Lobster Pot. (Photo by Emma Madgic)
“Mom goes in with
two feet,” Rose says
of her mother’s commitment
to the Provincetown
community.
“She’s a force to be
reckoned with.”
The community
event Ferreira is most
fiercely devoted to is
the annual Portuguese
Festival and Blessing
of the Fleet, which is
taking place this weekend.
She and Gordon
opened Stormy Harbor
on the weekend of the
blessing 49 years ago.
She has been a festival
volunteer for the past
20 years.
The Portuguese Festival
as it is known today
began only 26 years ago,
Ferreira says. The yearly
event used to include
only the Blessing of the
Fleet, she recalls, during
which fishing crews
would invite their families
and friends onto
their boats for a massive
feast after each
boat had been blessed.
The festival, which
this year includes an
opening night at the
Provincetown Inn, a
soup tasting, and a fado
performance, among
many other events, is
important because it
is a reminder of Provincetown’s
Portuguese
roots, Ferreira says. She
helps coordinate the festival
“so that everyone
knows we’re still here.”
As the fishing fleet
has grown smaller in
Provincetown, Ferreira
says, a lot of the younger
Portuguese fishermen
have moved to New
Bedford and Fall River,
where they can make
better wages. Without
a bigger fleet, she says,
“we don’t have the Portuguese
young people
that we need to keep
our heritage going.”
Nevertheless, the
festival is an important
display of Provincetown’s
rich history,
Ferreira says. She
enjoys the generosity
of the endeavor, too.
“It’s all volunteers,”
she says. “Nobody
gets paid.”
When she’s not
working on the festival
logistics, Ferreira
is at the Lobster Pot
most Mondays, Tuesdays,
and Fridays from
11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“Everyone is happy
to see her face when
she walks through the
door,” Speicher says.
“She takes no guff from
anybody either.”
“There are very few
Beverleys left,” says
Tim McNulty, one of
the owners and head
chef at the Lobster Pot.
He has known Ferreira
since childhood. “There
are very few people
left in town who know
what it was like when
we were kids,” he says.
“She is a historian
because she carries
those memories,” says
Mike Potenza, the Lobster
Pot’s director of
marketing, who went
to school with one of
Ferreira’s daughters.
Speicher says that,
although Ferreira has
seen the community
go through so many
changes, “She isn’t one
of those who complain
about change all the
time, how the old days
were better than the
new days.”
Instead, Ferreira “is
the kind of person who
embraces change,” Speicher
says. “With her
faith and her positive
outlook on things, she’s
open to it all.”
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 29
LATE SHIFT
When a Flea Market Find
Is a New Direction
Old friends reflect on second acts, begun on the
drive-in blacktop
By Paul Sullivan
“I love murdering
people,” says Donna
Walo Clancy in her
Boston accent, letting
out a slight giggle,
twirling her ponytail
with her left hand,
wearing an apron. She is
taking a break from her
shift at the snack bar at
the Wellfleet Drive-In,
standing outside in the
blazing sun.
Clancy is talking
about murder mysteries,
which she authors and
prints herself and sells
during the summer on
Saturdays and Sundays
at the Wellfleet Flea
Market, held in the lot at
the drive-in during the
day. Clancy is standing
in front of a small
folding table she has
set up just outside the
snack bar, close enough
that she can keep an eye
on it while serving food
and drinks. On the table
are 12 of the books she
has written.
Some of the titles:
Death by Chowder, a
murder mystery set on
the Cape; Dad’s Final
Gift, a holiday-themed
mystery; and Until Jam
Do Us Part, one in a
series about a string of
murders that occur in a
jelly shop.
A synopsis of Death
by Chowder from
Clancy herself: “It’s a
fictional town in Cape
Cod. It’s got two main
characters, Jay Hallett
and Roland Knowles,
who’s a ghost. He takes
care of the lighthouse
on Anchor Point.
There’s a massive
treasure hunt going
on, because Roland
was killed back in 1910
when he found pirate
treasure. He buried it
and he still won’t tell
anybody where it is.”
Clancy’s favorite
character she’s ever
written is Gladys
Twiddle, “who dyes
her hair to match
the brightly colored
flowers she’s growing in
her garden.”
All of Clancy’s books
are family friendly.
“There’s no blood and
guts; there’s no sex or
drugs,” she explains.
“These are all cozy
mysteries.” They’re
available for purchase,
one for $10, or two
for $18.
Clancy grew up in
Rockland. She served
21 years in the military.
Afterwards, she found
herself — and she
doesn’t know how, she
says — divorced with
three children, living
in Wellfleet. “Happily
divorced, mind you,”
she says.
She wrote her first
story in the third
grade in 1968. “I got
an A on it,” she says,
adding that she really
got into writing when,
as a child, she started
reading Nancy Drew.
“I just love Nancy Drew.”
As Clancy is talking,
her friend Al Chisholm
— who operates a
berry company out of
Plymouth and sells his
products at the flea
market, mostly jams
and sauces, one of them
called “Al’s Wiener
Whacking Sauce,”
which is a jalapeño and
pepper relish — comes
up and tells Clancy
that she has to tell the
reporter about how she
used to “dance at the
greasy pole.”
“You’re so bad,”
Clancy says to him.
“Don’t be telling my
secrets.”
“I come with a roll of
ones every day to this
place,” Chisholm says.
There used to be,
Clancy explains, a pole
right outside the snack
bar and she and her
friends used to joke
about her pole dancing
and “earning tips.”
Chisholm and
Clancy, as it happens,
have collaborated on
Chisholm’s cookbook,
Al’s Backwoods Berries.
Chisholm supplied
Clancy with his recipes
and she organized
them and came up
with a throughline for
the book.
Chisholm began his
company 10 years ago
after his wife died, which
was around the same
time he lost his job in
the 2008 financial crash.
His brother owned a
bottling company and he
suggested that Chisholm
start making jams
and jellies.
“I said, ‘Who the hell
eats jams and jellies?’
I don’t even like fruit,”
Chisholm says. “But
now I sell 30,000 jars a
year.”
“When I had my
labels made, they told
me that if I came down
here to the Wellfleet
Flea Market and I did
well here, I could swing
it,” he says. “If you can
make it at the Wellfleet
Flea Market, you can
make it anywhere.”
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Art Association and Museum
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Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 31
RIGHTS
Ngina Lythcott Is This Year’s
Tim McCarthy Human Rights Champion
‘Right now is a time when we have to make some big decisions …
we are not going backwards,’ she says
By Aden Choate
PROVINCETOWN —
Ngina Ruth Lythcott has
been named the 2023
Tim McCarthy Human
Rights Champion. She’ll
receive the award at a
breakfast hosted by
the Barnstable County
Human Rights Advisory
Commission on Jan. 8.
“Ngina epitomizes
the spirit of Tim Mc
Carthy,” says Jay Critchley,
founder of the Provincetown
Community
Compact, which manages
the Tim Fund, the
organization behind the
award. The fund was
established in memory
of the late HIV-AIDS
activist who countered
homophobia with documentary
videography.
The award recognizes
Lythcott for her
more than 20 years of
work on Black women’s
health, with students
and schools, including
nine years on the
Provincetown School
Committee, and with
Barnstable County police
captains. Lythcott
has also been central
in planning the town’s
Juneteenth events.
She did not earn the
award alone, Lythcott
says. She credits a long
list of teachers and
mentors with shaping
her approach to social
change — among
them her wife, Byllye
Avery, who received a
MacArthur Foundation
“genius” grant for her
work revolutionizing
Black women’s health
care in 1989.
The couple share
three children, two
black-and-white cats,
and one grandson,
whose college graduation
they attended
in Tampa, Fla. last week.
They have both had careers
as advocates focused
on reproductive
and racial justice.
Lythcott and Avery,
who married at the
Pilgrim Monument in
2005, met almost 40
years ago in Atlanta at
a meeting of the Black
Women’s Health Project
(now Health Imperative),
an initiative Avery
had just started. Lythcott
had recently arrived
in the city for her thenhusband’s
appointment
as dean of Morehouse
University Medical
School. She was fresh
off a job at Dartmouth
College and had done
grassroots advocacy
work for Planned Parenthood
of New England.
While she was
at Dartmouth, she won
a $5 million grant from
the Kaiser Family Foundation
to implement a
model of community
development she had
begun to devise during
her doctoral studies
at UCLA.
Lythcott brought
the project to Atlanta,
where she focused on an
under-resourced public
housing project called
Carver Homes. She was
drawn to it because, she
says, everyone told her
it was a lost cause. “People
said, ‘Don’t go there.’
Trash wasn’t collected.
The school bus wasn’t
stopping,” she says.
Unlike previous projects
she had spearheaded,
Lythcott says, this
time she couldn’t get
through to the women
she was trying to
reach. “They were so
depressed that all they
could do was get their
children out of the
house for school in the
morning,” she says.
Lythcott knew she
had to change her approach.
That came, she
says, through her relationship
with Avery.
Avery introduced
Lythcott to self-help,
then a relatively radical
concept not only in
psychology but in public
health. Instead of
focusing on community
outcomes, self-help allowed
individual experiences
to be put on the
table. This had rippled
out from sessions at the
1983 First National Conference
on Black Women’s
Health Issues, an
event Avery organized
at Spelman College and
which was the subject
of a Nov. 11 story in the
New York Times.
In one photo from
the conference, a banner
strung behind the
podium proclaimed:
“We are sick and tired
of being sick and tired.”
The conference explored
the link between
Black women’s health
and racism, their disproportionately
high
rates of hypertension,
32 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
diabetes, and cervical
cancer, among other
diseases, and the ways
they were systematically
excluded from reproductive
health and
mental health services.
One session, Lythcott
recalls, asked those present
what they adored
about themselves. Few
could answer the question.
Avery says that was
because Black women
had been conditioned
by family, church, and
society to care for everything
except themselves.
“When the world repeatedly
tells you that you
aren’t enough, you start
to believe it,” she says.
When Lythcott adopted
Avery’s approach,
inviting the women of
Carver Homes to meet
in small groups to talk
about what their lives
really looked like behind
the scenes, she
found their stories often
included experiences
of abuse and mental
illness. “Black women
were taught to be the
muses of the world,”
says Avery. “We taught
them how to start to put
themselves first.”
Within six months,
the Carver Homes
community was transformed
from the inside
out, Lythcott says.
Organizing this way
worked for three reasons,
she says: “First
of all, you don’t die
holding onto a secret.
Second, two or three
other people often have
the same story. Third,
you’re in a safe space
to cry and wail.” The
approach she and Avery
call “co-counseling”
meant the women were
no longer alone in their
private struggles.
In their Provincetown
home, cozily enveloped
in the scents of
woodsy Nag Champa incense
and fresh-brewed
Nespresso, Lythcott and
Avery show a visitor
their art collection. It is
a mosaic of their histories,
both individual and
shared. In the retelling,
they often finish one another’s
sentences.
In one corner of the
dining room is a mahogany
statue of a father
and son from Tanzania.
Lythcott lived there in
the early 1970s after finishing
degrees in nursing
and social work.
That is where she came
to be called Ngina, she
says. After she helped
a woman address her
baby’s protein deficiency
with a change of
diet, people came to her
with cuts, bruises, and
burns. Instead of treating
them directly, she
collaborated with the
local healer, making it
clear that she was there
to support his work, not
take over. People started
calling her Ngina,
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Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 33
Ngina Lythcott, right, at home with Byllye Avery, her partner in life and in activism. (Photo by Elias Duncan)
a Bantu word meaning
“one who serves.”
Later, when Lythcott
was out in the bush doing
project evaluation,
local children followed
her around, calling out
“mzungu,” which meant
“white lady.” Lythcott is
Black, but they saw her
as different, an American
and an outsider. An
older woman suddenly
emerged from a hut and
addressed the children:
“ ‘Do you not recognize
your auntie? She was
taken from us long ago.
Ask her what it is like
to cross the ocean,’ ”
says Lythcott.
As Lythcott puts it,
she arrived in the village
holding the name Ngina
under her arm and left
with it sewn into her
soul. Fifty years later,
Lythcott says that moment
of recognition was
the most pivotal in her
life up to that point.
On the butteryellow
walls of their
dining room are a Howard
University exhibit
poster for the artist Loïs
Mailou Jones, a photograph
of Avery’s grandfather,
who tapped
Georgia pine trees for
turpentine, and a print
depicting the 1839
Amistad revolt, in which
53 men kidnapped from
Sierra Leone rose up
against their captors
on a schooner en route
to the slave trade capital
of Havana, Cuba.
Their case was heard
in the United States,
and the Supreme Court
decided in their favor.
The decision read “...it
was the ultimate right
of all human beings in
extreme cases to resist
oppression, and
to apply force against
ruinous injustice.”
Avery says she first encountered
this story in
the rotunda of Talladega
College, her alma mater
in Alabama. It was the
first time she had white
professors, she said,
many of whom were
Jewish intellectuals
who had fled Germany.
Amid the red scare of
McCarthyism, she says,
they taught her Arthur
Miller’s The Crucible.
Talladega, like other
historically Black
colleges in the deep
South, became central
to the growth of
the burgeoning civil
rights movement. Martin
Luther King Jr. was
Avery’s commencement
speaker in 1959, but it
was his speech from a
1956 Founder’s Day celebration
at the college
that affected her most
deeply, she says.
King spoke of the
three types of love:
erotic, platonic, and redemptive.
Redemption,
he said, was the most
important. He reminded
Avery and her peers
that they did not have
the luxury to sit on the
sidelines as the world
changed. “He said, ‘You
have to forgive people
for the horrors they’ve
done,’ ” says Avery.
When Avery and
Lythcott look toward the
future and see younger
generations uniting in
the face of contemporary
attacks on bodily autonomy
and civil rights,
they feel hope. The cat
they call Lady Darkness
weaves underfoot.
Avery places her hand
on Lythcott’s arm.
“Sometimes God is
laughing, sometimes
he’s crying,” Lythcott
says. “I feel right now
is a time in humanity
when we have to make
some big decisions. We
were not put here to
be inferior. We are not
going backwards.”
34 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
Pilar Clements rides her Arabian, Adriano, on Ryder Beach in Truro on April 26. (Photos by Nancy Bloom)
HORSES
Roaming Trails and Beaches
and Finding Freedom on
Horseback
A few in Wellfleet, mostly women, keep an Outer Cape
equestrian tradition
By Jack Styler
WELLFLEET — Barbara
Austin got her first horse,
Duchess, when she was
10. The two went everywhere
together, and
their trust in each other
was absolute.
At Wellfleet’s kettle
ponds, Austin could
park Duchess in the water
and use her back as a
diving board. She could
sit on Duchess’s head,
and Duchess would
raise it, sliding Austin
down onto her back.
Austin could even ride
Duchess standing up.
“I think after having
that kind of experience
with your first horse,
you’re never going
to not have a horse,”
says Austin.
For the past 54 years,
alongside her prodigious
career as an oysterman,
Austin has
kept horses one way
or another in Wellfleet
— usually right in the
back yard of her house
off Route 6. She is one
of a loosely connected
but dedicated group of
people — most of them
women — who have
continued to keep horses
even as farms have
become few and far
between here.
When she was young,
Austin says, “most of the
guys had minibikes and
most of the girls had
horses.” Mounted on
their chosen modes of
transport, they would
ride all over the Outer
Cape from Great Island
to Nauset Road and as
far north as Provincetown.
Today, Austin has two
horses: Cody, a 32-yearold
Morgan-quarter
horse cross that Austin
got in exchange for
five bushels of oysters,
and Luna, a 15-year-old
Welsh mountain pony.
“There used to be
a big group of us that
all had horses here in
Wellfleet,” she says. But
as her group ages, she
adds, there are fewer
horsewomen coming
up behind them. “Property
has been becoming
more expensive,
so it’s become harder
and harder to find a
place to keep a horse,”
says Austin.
According to Wellfleet
Health and Conservation
Dept. records, the town
issued stable permits
to 10 properties in the
past four years. So far
in 2024, there are only
eight active permits.
Pilar Clements and
her husband, oyster
farmer Jacob Dalby, feel
lucky to have found the
right house for keeping
horses in Wellfleet. Clements,
a Texas native
who spent summers in
Wellfleet, where she
met Dalby, is from a
horse-riding family outside
Austin. So, when
they found a red house
with a paddock already
built in the front yard
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 35
on Peace Valley Road,
they knew it was home.
Today, the paddock
is home to Theo, a thoroughbred
descendant
of two triple-crown
champions, including
the famous Secretariat,
and Adriano, a chestnut
Arabian.
The two horses keep
the couple busy. Every
day, Clements wakes
up at 6:30 a.m. to give
Theo and Adriano their
first helping of hay. The
pen must be scooped
for poop, which accumulates
at the rate of
roughly one wheelbarrowful
per day. They
compost it for neighbors
who use it in their
gardens. Every eight
weeks, the horses’ shoes
must be replaced. Once
a year, a veterinarian
comes to tranquilize
Theo and Adriano so
that their back teeth can
be filed down, a practice
called “floating” that
prevents horses’ teeth
from becoming too long
and impeding digestion.
Keeping horses is not
inexpensive, especially
on the Outer Cape. The
farrier, Alisha Fitzpatrick,
comes from Rochester;
the large animal
veterinarian drives from
Plymouth. Food is expensive,
and horses eat a lot.
Clements says she gets a
good deal— $10 per bale
— on hay, but the two
horses eat a bale a day.
For Clements and
Dalby, however, the la-
Barefoot and bareback, Ferran Dalby leads the way on a ride with her
mother, Pilar Clements.
bor and costs are worth
it. Theo and Adriano
are a constant source
of entertainment. The
couple watch from their
second-floor window as
Theo and Adriano trot
and play in the front
yard. Their daughter,
Ferran, is an avid horsewoman,
too. And about
twice a week, they ride.
On their rides, which
can be 5 to 10 miles
long, Clements says
they are not just passengers
but stewards of the
trails. The family maintains
the old dirt paths
that snake through the
woods, often clearing
stray branches for hikers,
cyclists, and other
equestrians who use
the paths.
“There’s nothing
more freeing than being
on a horse,” says
Nora Clark-Jennings,
who lives on Old Kings
Highway in Wellfleet
and whose quarter
horse, Woody’s Wish,
lives in the barn in her
front yard. She rides to
see the sunrise over the
ocean and the sunset
over the bay.
Clark-Jennings grew
up in Wellfleet and was
inspired to keep horses
by her dad, who was
from Arkansas. Though
Woody’s Wish sometimes
“acts like a little
kid,” she says, he was
named after her late father,
Laymon Woodrow
“Woody” Clark Sr.
“I grew up with my
dad’s stories,” says
Clark-Jennings. Those
stories, and being with
horses now, take her
back to a different time.
The evidence of modern-day
life, however,
is hard to keep at bay
on horseback. Austin,
Clements, Dalby, and
Clark-Jennings all say
that they encounter
the occasional obnoxious
driver, especially
on Route 6, which they
must travel to get to
certain trails.
Austin and Clements
both say they have had
run-ins with overzealous
park rangers who
warned them that horses
are not allowed in
the National Seashore.
One told Austin it was
because horses count as
vehicles. Clements says
she was told her horse
violated a “no pets”
rule. A representative
from the Cape Cod National
Seashore told the
Independent in an email
that “horseback riding
at the Seashore isn’t
super common, but it
is permitted.”
In many ways, that
mixup reflects the general
understanding of
horse culture on the
Outer Cape: it’s uncommon
enough that some
doubt whether it’s even
allowed, but there are
few rules against it.
The town of Wellfleet
has some regulations.
36 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
Barbara Austin with her Welsh pony, Luna, and her 32-year-old
Morgan-quarter horse, Cody.
Nora Clark-Jennings with Woody’s Wish, the horse she named after her
father.
Permits are required,
and stables must be
checked once a year to
make sure the animals
are healthy and that
their waste is being disposed
of properly. Abutters
must also give their
permission for a new
stable to be authorized.
But otherwise, the
feeling of freedom
Clark-Jennings describes
seems to define
PI Special - My Employee Manager.pdf 1 10/22/24 12:13 PM
the experience.
Once a woman in a
BMW with New York
plates rolled her window
down in astonishment
when she saw Clements
and Dalby riding
on Route 6. “Horses?
You can have horses on
Cape Cod?” she asked.
“It’s a free country,”
said Clements.
“You can have horses
anywhere.”
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38 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
UNSOLVED MYSTERY
You’ve Got Gail
Trying to escape the notorious RMV road tester is no sure thing
By (Saskia) Max(well) Keller
Fail Gail. The epithet
strikes fear in the hearts
of high schoolers, yet no
one seems to know her
real name.
I am speaking, of
course, of the infamous
road test examiner at
the South Yarmouth Registry
of Motor Vehicles.
She has been administering
road tests for 15 to
20 years, estimates Geoff
Leary, a driving instructor
at Nauset Regional
High School.
Neither Leary nor
Dave Potts, Nauset’s
driver education program
coordinator,
knows her full name.
Attempts to query
the RMV were unsuccessful.
This reporter
was put on hold for
two hours, listening
to a clanky Mozart piano
concert on loop.
What would have been
a proper investigation
has become an
unsolved mystery.
Nevertheless, Fail
Gail is truly the gatekeeper
for most young
would-be drivers on
Cape Cod. As of 2015,
she was the only examiner
at the South Yarmouth
Registry. I had
her twice, six years
apart, almost to the day.
I took my first driving
test when I was a senior
in high school. I remember
messing up the parallel
parking, and Gail
saying, “Is this parallel
parking or crooked parking?”
I don’t remember
exactly what her final
words to me were, but
it was something along
the lines of “You are a
danger to society.”
I didn’t rush back to
retake the test. I didn’t
need a driver’s license
as a student living in
Boston or Scotland.
When I returned to the
Cape because of the
pandemic, however, I
needed one for my job
elleet
Spirits
Shoppe
309 Main St., Wellfleet
508-349-3731
wellfleetspirits@gmail.com
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 39
at the Independent. But
the South Yarmouth
RMV was closed. After
months of waiting, I
was able to schedule a
test in Plymouth.
On the day of the
test, heading off Cape,
I thought I would be
safe from Gail, but I was
wrong. She had packed
up her clipboard for
Plymouth. I recognized
her immediately. Six
years later, as if fulfilling
some strange
prophecy, we were face
to face, or rather, mask
to mask.
I was later able to
confirm it by comparing
my two learner’s
permits. She signed
the first one with her
I.D. number, and the
second with a large,
ominous “G.” The handwriting
on the dates,
however, was the same.
I settled into the unfamiliar
car — all road
tests are currently in
state vehicles — and
puzzled over how to
start it. I had never before
driven a hybrid
with a key. “You should
know how to do that,”
said Gail.
After I nailed my
parallel parking, she
immediately deflated
my confidence by asking,
“Why are you so
nervous?” I wasn’t
nervous before she
asked, but now I was.
“If you were a better
driver, you wouldn’t
be nervous,” she said.
An admittedly amateur handwriting analysis shows the judgments
rendered on two learner’s permits were made by the Cape’s most famous
road test examiner, known as Fail Gail. (Photo by [Saskia] Max[well] Keller)
Thrown off, I tapped a
cone pulling out of the
parallel parking.
As I got sweeter,
she got meaner. Her
hand hovered over the
emergency brake.
The fateful moment
came when, pulling up
to an intersection and
starting to turn left, I
carefully said, “I see
there is a car coming
from the left, but there
is plenty of room.” She
pulled the brake —
an automatic fail.
Luckily, I easily
passed the road test
with a different examiner
a month later. Still,
I couldn’t shake how
intimidating Fail Gail
had been.
It was easy to gather
other people’s Fail
Gail stories. While most
confirmed the accuracy
of her nickname, a few
were surprisingly positive.
Several interviewees
asked for anonymity,
including one who
said, “I’ve heard that
she favors boys and
people who come with
a driving instructor
instead of a parent.”
Kiah Ruml, a Nauset
High graduate, said,
“I was really nervous
and did pretty horribly
on my driving test, but
right when it was over
she said, ‘You definitely
need some more practice,
but the only reason
I’m going to pass you is
because I don’t want to
see your face here at
the RMV again.’ ”
“She did not smile
once, and said everything
like she was
reciting a verse from
the Bible,” said Bella
Hay, a student at Nauset
High. “I knew I messed
up every time she scribbled
on her clipboard. I
swear the woman never
looked at the road. She
was constantly writing
on that clipboard.”
Hay said that, after she
failed, she made sure to
schedule her next test
for a Tuesday. She had
heard that was “Gail’s
only day off.”
Becca Stevens, another
Nauset graduate,
said that when she
“botched” the parallel
parking, “Gail started
talking me through my
next steps … It was oddly
comforting.” After
the test, Gail gave her a
lecture and handed her
a pamphlet. Stevens assumed
she had failed.
But Gail said, “Turn it
around!” It said she
had passed.
If I had been able
to interview Fail Gail
for this story, I would
have asked her why
she became a road test
examiner. Perhaps she
believes she is cutting
down on the number of
accidents. The profession
must be relatively
dangerous. Psychologically,
unkindness might
not be a surprising
occupational hazard.
Who knows? Perhaps
if it weren’t for
Fail Gail, there would
be even more Massholes
on the road.
40 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
GREAT PLANES
As Long as There’s No Wind,
Kenny Dutra Flies
A flyer of radio-controlled aircraft takes to the skies in Truro
By Sophie Mann-Shafir
TRURO — As Hurricane
Lee grazed Cape Cod,
Kenny Dutra watched
high winds whip at
branches in the woods
outside his Truro
home. It sent his many
birdfeeders spinning,
making them impossible
targets for their
avian patrons. Those
birds’ usual flight patterns
were not the only
ones interrupted by
the storm.
Dutra’s own 46-flyer
collection of radiocontrolled
aircraft were
grounded that day until
daybreak of the next.
“If there’s no wind,
I’m flying,” says Dutra,
79, whose “full-time
hobby” — besides walking
his dog — of flying
radio-controlled planes
and helicopters takes
him to Head of the
Meadow most mornings
around 6 a.m. On
some days he goes at
dusk as well, always
steering clear of the
federally protected
piping plovers.
Dawn and dusk
are solo flying times
for Dutra, though he’s
known to rangers and
police, who receive sporadic
calls in the summer
from concerned
residents mistaking
his sturdy, polished,
unmanned aircraft,
vibrant in the distance,
for low-flying planes.
Those reports happen
often enough, Dutra
says, that he gets a
friendly wave from responding
officers, who
sometimes stay a bit to
watch him fly.
On weekends, Dutra
makes his way west
to Discover Flying RC
Kenny Dutra’s Space Walker is ready for takeoff at Head of the Meadow in Truro. (photos by Nancy Bloom)
in Marstons Mills, a
club for people who fly
radio-controlled planes.
There, he takes to the
skies with other aficionados
who are “mostly
on the senior side,” he
says. The fields there
can accommodate two
or three aircraft at a
time. Hanging out there
is about more than just
controlling your own
flying machine. He goes
because there “you can
have a cup of coffee and
watch other people fly,”
says Dutra.
It’s lucky that Marstons
Mills is on this
side of the bridge.
Dutra, who discovered
radio-controlled flying
during his junior year
at Provincetown High
School, wouldn’t like to
chase his hobby farther.
“I have panic attacks if
I go past the Sagamore
Bridge,” says the flyer, a
Cape Codder to the core.
In the basement of his
Truro home, which he
and his wife, Virginia,
built 39 years ago, Dutra
has a workshop dedicated
to maintenance
of his craft. There, he
assembles new planes
from kits and tinkers
with those already in
his collection. Kits can
come in all states of
readiness, says Dutra;
some flyers put in their
own motors, but usually
electronics are included.
Back in the day, he
says, parts were glued
together; more recent
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 41
On the tailgate is Dutra’s Fusion 360 helicopter, one of the many 3D helicopters in his collection. He does all the repairs on them himself.
models are held together
by nuts and bolts.
As a hobbyist, Dutra
is exempt from the
Cape Cod National Seashore’s
prohibition of
unmanned aircraft. But
several of his planes
have helmeted, aviator-goggled
figurines
inside. In what is perhaps
a testament to his
J3 Piper Cub days, Dutra
insists that those figures
are not passengers.
“You’ve got to have
pilots in a plane,”
he says.
As a young man,
Dutra did spend eight
years in Connecticut,
testing jet engines at the
Pratt & Whitney aerospace
factory there. For
two summers, Dutra
also worked at the Provincetown
Municipal
Airport, where he tried
his hand at piloting a J3
Piper Cub — a lightweight,
versatile monoplane
he describes as
“basic, easy-to-fly” —
though flying caused
him nothing but anxiety.
“I don’t think I was
ever relaxed,” says
Dutra, who will take a
radio-controlled craft
over a real plane any
day. “It’s a lot safer and
cheaper,” he says.
Dutra with his Pitts biplane in early spring. These real-scale light aerobatic
biplanes were designed by Curtis Pitts in the 1940s; they dominated
world aerobatic competition in the 1960s and ’70s
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Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 43
RADIO
Matty Dread Is an
‘Ambassador of Love’
Meet the man who keeps
WOMR spinning
By Aden Choate
Matthew Dunn, the
operations manager at
Provincetown’s Outermost
Community Radio
(WOMR), has waistlength
dreadlocks and
wears galaxy-print
shirts. Both amplify his
gravitational pull.
In his corner office
at 494 Commercial St.,
he engages a visitor the
same way he does his
radio audience, offering
an immersive auditory
experience. He talks
in a warm, deep voice
punctuated by the staccato
cadences of something
like Beat poetry —
free-flowing and intent
on bucking convention.
Dunn has been with
WOMR since 2002,
when the station lived
in a condo on Center
Street. He started out as
a DJ on the midnight to
3 a.m. graveyard shift.
Supporting himself with
various side hustles —
tending bar, waiting
tables, and DJing for
weddings — he worked
as a volunteer for 10
years before becoming
the full-time operations
manager in 2012.
Dunn introduces
himself as Matt, but
most people know him
as Matty Dread. The
nickname predates his
time on the radio; he
got it at the University
of Vermont where, immersed
in the reggae of
the late 1980s, he decided
to “go dread.”
“I was a young hippie
with an Irish afro,”
he says. “I was never
seriously into Rastafarianism,
but my hair
represents my commitment
to breaking down
cultural norms. At this
point I think I would
still be Matty Dread
even if I cut my hair or
it all falls out.”
Dunn hosts the blues
show Morning Madness
on Wednesdays from
5 to 6 a.m. and The Soul
Funky Train on Thursdays
from 1 to 4 p.m.
On any given Thursday,
a listener might follow
him through a playlist
of jazz, hip-hop, rock,
reggae, and soul, held
together by the fiber of
funk that Dunn threads
to connect them.
“The vast majority
of the time, I’m playing
music that I suspect
most people will never
have heard before,” he
says. He thinks listeners
get more joy that way.
“But I do try to provide
a few signposts along the
way. I’ll throw in Aretha
Franklin or something
because it helps put everything
else in context.”
Dunn was born and
raised in Syracuse, N.Y.,
studied philosophy in
college, and moved to
Cape Cod in the early
aughts with his wife,
Beth, who grew up here
listening to her father,
Jim Mulligan, on his
long-running WOMR
show, Mulligan Stew.
Now, Beth and Matty
co-host the station’s
Outer Cape News show
every Friday afternoon.
Matty drives to the studio
in Provincetown
from their home in
Dennis at least once a
day, sometimes more,
depending on need.
DJing is just one part
of Dunn’s job. “My real
job is making sure the
radio stays on,” he says.
“I ask Matty technical
questions often,” says
Denya LeVine of Wellfleet,
who has been a
WOMR DJ since 1985.
“He put together a manual
that you can look at
for almost anything you
need to know.”
In addition to making
the schedule and
providing tech support,
Dunn trains and manages
the 100 or so DJs who
sustain the station’s programming
across a wide
spectrum of genres. “It’s
Matthew Dunn, a.k.a. DJ Matty
Dread, at WOMR, where he hosts
Morning Madness and The Soul
Funky Train. (Photo by Aden
Choate)
eclectic: bluegrass, funk,
opera, folk,” he says.
“Matty is constantly
trying to bring new
voices to the station and
weave a fabric that reflects
the Outer Cape,”
says Mike Fee, who
lives in Truro and hosts
Road Trippin’ — a threehour
journey through
classic and contemporary
blues, rock, soul,
and funk on Thursday
mornings. “I started
calling him the ambassador
— he is truly the
ambassador of love.”
That diplomatic spirit
helped Eric Auger
feel welcome when he
joined the station last
year as a substitute DJ
after moving to Provincetown
during the pandemic.
He says Dunn’s
trust in him helped him
feel that he had found a
home at WOMR.
44 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
Each time he has
presented a new idea —
from pitching his show
The Reminiscence Bump,
in which Auger relates
memories from his life
and plays the songs attached
to them, to holiday-themed
sets like
a Halloween vampire
radio hour — Dunn has
been all ears. His approach
is “Okay, let’s see
what you can do,” Auger
says.
Dunn’s DJ diplomacy
also includes visiting
Outer Cape schools to
teach kids about radio
and making house calls
to collect donations
from listeners who want
to offload their analog
music collections of
cassettes, CDs, and vinyl.
He assesses the value
of these donations and
sells them on Discogs, a
type of eBay for music
collectors. The proceeds
of the sales go to WOMR.
Until they are sold,
most donations get
stored in Dunn’s office.
Two floor-to-ceiling
bookshelves packed
with vinyl climb one
wall on either side of a
large window above a
sun-bleached red carpet.
There are cassettes
on one desk and CDs on
another.
From a different pile,
Dunn picks up Woyaya,
a 1971 album by the
London-based Afro-rock
band Osibisa. “I just
discovered them,” he
says, beaming like a kid
with a brand-new toy.
Posters of Earth,
Wind & Fire and from
the New Orleans radio
station WWOZ guard
the desk, which is populated
with a soundboard,
microphone,
and four monitors that
Dunn constantly works.
Above all of this,
there’s also a scrap
of paper on the wall,
penned by the musician
and WOMR board
member Barbara Blaisdell,
that frames Dunn’s
commitment to the station
in black and white:
“I pledge allegiance to
WOMR and to the programming
for which it
stands: one station, on
Cape Cod, transmittable
with melody and
substance for all.”
Dunn is quick to note
that he is just one voice
of many. “None of this
happens without everybody
working together,”
he says.
“I want to be able to
have WOMR be a safe
space for me to do my
thing and to create that
space for other people
to do it, too,” says Dunn.
“It started with just hippies
and beer and borrowed
space. More than
40 years later, we’re
still here to provide a
platform for members
of the community to express
themselves.”
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46 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
COVE WATCH
On and Off the Lifeguards’
Chair at Herring Cove Beach
A tight-knit team of students, entrepreneurs, and ‘lifers’
who love their Seashore jobs
By Jacob Smollen
PROVINCETOWN —
Alan Weaver is a real estate
broker in Hudson,
N.Y. for most of the year,
but this summer he’s
a lifeguard at Herring
Cove Beach in Provincetown.
With white hair
sticking out from under
his floppy brown hat, he
stands out among his
colleagues.
Weaver, 65, is a firstyear
guard, as are several
of his college-age
colleagues — proof that
while lifeguarding can
be a way station for students
and recent graduates,
not everyone fits
the stereotype.
“I like working with
them,” Weaver says of
his younger colleagues.
“Hopefully they like
working with me, and
if not, tough.”
Long hours watching
the water in pairs from
the lifeguards’ chair
makes the group tightknit.
Six guards cover
Herring Cove through
the summer, but only
four are at the beach
each day. Collette Spring,
20, from Pembroke, who
studies at UMass Dartmouth
and is in her
second year at Herring
Cove, says she likes that
she gets to meet a variety
of people.
“When would I
ever sit with a random
65-year-old man on a
chair for eight hours
a day?” Spring says.
“But in the best way
possible.”
Weaver got himself
recertified after hearing
about the lifeguard
job at the National Seashore
from a friend. He
has visited Provincetown
every year since
2011 in September to
participate in the Swim
for Life. He applied
three times before being
hired, he says.
“I haven’t had to
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Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 47
Collette Spring of Pembroke, left, a second-year lifeguard at Herring Cove
Beach, with her co-worker Alan Weaver, right, a first-year guard who is
also a real estate broker from Hudson, N.Y. (Photos by Jacob Smollen)
Nathan Greene, left, a first-year lifeguard at Herring Cove Beach from
Troy, N.Y. who hopes to be a “lifer” and his fellow first-year guard Sam
Patry of Medfield.
apply for a job in about
40 years,” says Weaver,
who’s a self-employed
broker.
The lifeguards arrive
at 9 a.m. They change,
hang out, and usually
have breakfast together
while setting up the
beach for the day. Conversations
often drift
to what people did the
night before — Weaver’s
report is nearly always
that he turned in early.
This relaxed part of
the workday is important
to the crew. “We call
it family time,” Spring
says.
After setting up, the
crew starts workouts.
The pair not sitting
chooses an exercise:
swimming, paddling,
running, or a trip to
a nearby ranger gym,
says Spring. After 75 to
90 minutes, the pairs
switch places. Shifts for
the rest of the day rotate
between an hour on the
stand and an hour on
break, she says.
After 5 p.m. the lifeguards
have another
round of family time,
says Sam Patry, 21,
from Medfield, another
first-year guard. The
four often play volleyball
or toss around a
football —play keeps
things friendly between
co-workers, he says.
At the end of the summer,
the guards make
plaques out of “torps,”
or torpedo rescue buoys
— small pill-shaped
flotation devices. The
plaques include “beach
names” for each employee,
often referring
to gentle inside jokes,
Spring says. Last summer,
Spring called herself
“Queen of the Cove”
in conversations, but
her colleagues wouldn’t
let her claim the title because
she hadn’t been
on the job long enough.
She got to be Collette,
Duchess of the Cove instead.
Maybe she’ll become
Queen this year,
but a different nickname
may await — she
doesn’t know.
Like Spring and
Patry, Nathan Greene,
21, who is in his first
year with the National
Seashore, wants to
return next year. But
unlike his co-workers,
Greene wants to be a
“lifer,” coming back to
the beach as a lifeguard
year after year.
“I guess I can say
I’m following a tradition,”
says Greene, from
Troy, N.Y. His mother
worked for the National
Seashore for over two
decades, beginning
when she was around
his age, he says.
Under the glare of
the late afternoon sun,
beachgoers begin gathering
their things. Families
wait by foot showers
to wash off a day’s
worth of sand. Someone
at Far Land’s snack bar
pulls the handwritten
menu off its perch. And
around 5 p.m., the Herring
Cove lifeguards
begin carrying items,
including the fearsome
purple and white shark
flag, into the storage
room. It’s been a hot one,
Patry says, and more
heat means less conversation
on the stand.
The single lifeguard
chair, which is right at
the beach’s entrance,
stands empty — at least
temporarily.
By the time the lifeguards
have finished
cleaning up, their chair
spots have been stolen.
A pair of little girls survey
the beach from on
high, perhaps practicing
for their own future seaside
summer jobs.
48 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
CENTENARIANS
On July 4, Joseph Pellegrino Turns 100
A World War II veteran and Wellfleet legend reflects on a life well lived
By Amelia Roth-Dishy
WELLFLEET — Joseph
Pellegrino, the World
War II veteran, former
selectman, and builder
who turned 100 on July
4, can recall the milestones
of his life with
striking accuracy.
Aug. 4, 1938 was the
day he met Irene, his
wife of nearly 66 years.
Dec. 12, 1942 was the
day Joe and Irene married
at the American
Legion Hall in Wellfleet.
He was Catholic, she
was Methodist; they had
to forgo a church.
June 30, 1944: That’s
when Joe set sail from
New York Harbor to Naples,
Italy as a supply
man with the 15th Air
Force of the U.S. Army
after being drafted in
April 1943. “For three
full days, I was seasick,”
he says, summoning the
past from a comfortable
armchair in the family
home he built by hand
more than 75 years ago.
Later, Pellegrino rattles
off the birthdays
of his four kids: Tom,
who was born while
Joe was overseas, Joe
Jr., Norman, and Marie.
He has four grandchildren
and seven greatgrandchildren.
Pellegrino was born
in Cambridge, the sixth
of eight siblings. His
parents spoke Italian
with the first five kids,
but by the time Joe came
along, the Pellegrinos
were American citizens,
practicing their English
— a frustration for Joe
when he found himself
stationed in Italy during
the war.
He met Irene, a Wellfleet
native, when his
next-door neighbor,
Louis Morea, took him
to the Cape for a week’s
vacation in August 1938.
Irene was Morea’s cousin.
She was 14 and Joe
was 15.
“It was love at first
sight,” Joe says. “Bam.
She’s the girl for me.”
For the next two
years, Joe and Louis
hitchhiked from
Cambridge to Wellfleet
nearly every weekend
so that Joe could see his
girlfriend. “Rain, snow,
sleet, or hail,” Joe says,
“we were there with our
thumbs out.”
The two were married
before Joe was drafted.
He remained in the service
through 1945. He
was in California that
August, preparing for
deployment to Okinawa,
when the U.S. dropped
the atomic bomb. After
being discharged, he
returned to Wellfleet
and was reunited with
Irene and baby Tom at
Irene’s parents’ house.
In 1947, with a $4,000
GI mortgage, Joe built
the family’s main house
at 10 Cove Road, now
occupied by his daughter
Marie and her husband.
Later he built the
adjacent wing where he
lives now. He learned
his trade working with
local builders, including
Irene’s father, until he
struck out on his own in
the early 1950s.
The Pellegrino household,
Joe says, was just
the second in Wellfleet
to have a television.
All their neighbors and
friends came over on
Fridays and Saturdays
for the weekly specials.
From 1967 to 1970,
after a stint on the zoning
board of appeals, Joe
served as one of three
Wellfleet selectmen, cajoled
by local political
dissenters into running
against a candidate put
up by town godfather
Charles Frazier.
“I enjoyed it, but
it took a lot of time
away from my job,” he
says. “My wife wasn’t
very happy.”
When his kids were
young, Joe gave his time
to a long list of community
pursuits, coaching
the local Little League
team and guiding the
Wellfleet Boy Scouts.
Every year, he would
sell American flags before
the Fourth of July
parade, netting about
$800 for the American
Legion on his own
birthday.
“I had plenty of
energy then,” he says.
Even as a centenarian,
Joe keeps busy. He
used to have a bountiful
backyard garden where
he planted tomatoes,
corn, radishes, lettuce,
cucumbers, and three
kinds of squash. “It’s a
jungle now,” he says.
But with help from his
son Norman, he’s growing
two tomato plants at
the front door, which he
waters every other day.
A few years ago, the
post office installed a
mailbox in his front
yard, which he walks to
and from, supported by
his cane.
He also tends a bird
feeder, perched by the
living room window
closest to his armchair.
He has to go outside to
change the water, but
he has a work-around
for restocking his
signature feed mixture:
Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 49
Joseph Pellegrino in the back yard of his Wellfleet house, which he built in 1947. (Photo by Marnie Crawford Samuelson)
he soaks two slices of
white bread — it’s only
for the birds; he prefers
Italian bread — in water
and mashes them up,
then mixes in bird seed.
The final touch is suet
cake, which he grates in
with a knife.
“I end up with what
I call a concoction,” he
says. “I open the old
window, and out it goes.
My worst problem is the
squirrel. I figure, he’s
God’s creature — he’s
gotta eat. But he raises
hell with my bird seed.
Eats it up in a hurry.”
After getting the
mail, changing the water
in the birdbath, and
watering the tomato
plants, he says, “I’m
cooked. But I can sit and
talk all day,” he adds.
Indoors, Joe is well
stocked with word
searches and 300-piece
picture puzzles. A lifelong
Red Sox fan, he
keeps up with all the
games whether it’s a
winning season or a losing
one. And when Tom
Brady abandoned the
Patriots for Tampa Bay,
“I cried,” Joe says.
He also receives visits
and support from his
family. The fact that his
four children all stayed
in Wellfleet in homes
that Joe built is “very
gratifying” for him.
On June 20, the Wellfleet
Select Board voted
unanimously to honor
Joe Pellegrino, “an exemplary
Volunteer, Resident
and Human for
the Town of Well-fleet.”
The town wanted him
to serve as marshal in
this year’s July 4th parade,
his daughter-inlaw
Linda Pellegrino
says, but he was already
booked that day for a
birthday party.
Among the secrets to
his long life: he doesn’t
drink or smoke. “The
last time I had a cigarette
was back in 1944
over in Italy,” he says.
The family lost Irene
in 2008. And Tom, their
eldest son, died on May
9 at 78. Joe has outlived
all his siblings and
many friends.
“I thank God every
day for keeping me
here,” Joe says. “When
he wants me, he’ll call
me.” At that point, he
figures, “I’ll be reunited
with my wife and my
son, spiritually.” That is,
“if you believe in spiritual
life, life thereafter,
hereafter — whatever.”
He’s not sure, he says.
Better to live day by day.
“You think about
things like that,” he
says. “You try to find an
answer. But there is no
answer.”
There’s nothing particularly
special about
turning 100, he says.
“The best part of it, really,
is being alive.”
Joseph Pellegrino died
on Nov. 19, 2023. His
obituary appeared in the
Dec. 7, 2023 issue.
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Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 51
We are grateful to all who have supported the work of next-generation journalists in the
Provincetown Independent newsroom. Following is a list of donors in the 12 months from
November 1, 2023 through October 31, 2024.
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Maria Mottola
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Gordon Peabody
Nancy Pease
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Nick Picariello and
Barbara Brennessel
Ronald and Lesley Pollara
Vernon Diannah Porter
Deborah Posin
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Glenn Stuart Pasanen
Dody Riggs
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Richard Rogers
Katherine Rossmoore and
Bill Shields
James Rowan
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Martha Russell and
Jonathon Welch
Margaret Sagan and
Michael Simons
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Linda and Howie Schiffman
Jim R. Schmidt
Eric Secoy
Jennifer Shannon and
Jane Lea
52 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
Laura Sheffield and
Jonathan Austin
Rosemary Shields
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Sandra Rhodes
Robin and Thomas Slack
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Anne Sterling
Jane Stolzman and
Marc Hoffman
Juliet Stone
Cynthia Storer
George Swope
Judy P. Taylor
Robert Terry and
Judith Whitney-Terry
Leo Thibault
Patricia Thomas
Ted and Shelly Thomas
Harry Tucker
Anne Tufts
Deborah Ullman
Robert and Mel Van Peenan
Wendy and
Rod Van Peenan-Malcolm
Louise Venden
Laurie Veninger
Lisa Viola
James Vogel
Karen and Skip Wallace
Cherry Watkinson
Shirley Weber
Janet Whelan
Paul Wisotzky
John Woodford
Mike Wright
Watchdogs
$100 to $249
Deborah Abbott
Susan and George Abbott
Elizabeth Aberdale
Mark Adams
Iris Adler
Lee Adler and Lauren Kaufmann
David Agger and
Sharon Rule-Agger
Elizabeth Aldred
Scott A. Allegretti, D.D.S.
Nancy and Frederic Ambrose
Heidi and Rich Angle
John Bacewicz
Walter P. Baranowski
Nicole Barnum and Sophia Lee
John Beardsley
Donald Becker
Janet Y. Benjamins
Dana and Kathleen Berger
Richard Berke
Diana Bianchi
Bruce and Nancy Bierhans
Betty Bingham
Barbara Blaisdell
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Alex Brown
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Robert J. Butera
John Byrne
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Jim Campen and Phyllis Ewen
Barbara Carboni
Allen J. Cavicchi and
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Dan Kennedy
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Stephen and Marianne Kinzer
Douglas Kline and Nancy
Carlsson-Paige
Jason D. Kogan
David Koven and Diane Gordon
Bonnie Kramer
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Contracting, Inc.
Janice and Brian Larkin
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Cunningham
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Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People | 53
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54 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
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If we have made an
error or omission,
we are sorry and
we hope you will let
us know so we can
correct the record.
Executive Director
Janet Lesniak
Great newspapers
in small communities
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56 | Young Voices, Vol. 3 | People
Contributors
Aden Choate (Ngina Lythcott, page 31, and
Matty Dread, page 43) was a Mary Heaton Vorse
journalism fellow in 2024 and is a staff reporter
at the Independent. She is from Charleston, Ill. and
graduated from Georgetown in 2021.
Oliver Egger (Peter Cook, page 23) was a summer
journalism fellow in 2023 and is a contributor to the
Independent. He graduated from Wesleyan University
in 2023 and is an assistant editor at Wesleyan
University Press.
(Saskia) Max(well) Keller (Fail Gail, page 38)
worked as a staff reporter and then arts editor at the
Independent from 2020 to 2022. Keller graduated from
Harvard and has a master’s in musicology from the
University of Edinburgh. Keller lives in New York City
and writes the substack Poison Put to Sound.
Isabelle Nobili (Bob Wells, page 13) is from Eastham
and a 2021 graduate of Nauset Regional High School.
She was a summer journalism fellow in 2022 and
attends Johns Hopkins University.
Sam Pollak (Mulching Duck Harbor, page 7)
graduated from Wesleyan University in 2022. He
has reported for the Independent since 2022 and is a
freelance reporter in New York City.
Molly Reinmann (Cannabis gardeners, page 20) was
a summer journalism fellow in 2024. A student at
Yale University, she is currently taking a gap semester
in Madison, Wisc., where she is reporting for the
Wisconsin State Journal.
Amelia Roth-Dishy (Suede, page 10, and Joseph
Pellegrino, page 48) graduated from Harvard
University in 2022. She was a Mary Heaton Vorse
fellow in 2023 and worked as a staff reporter at the
Independent that year.
Josephine de La Bruyere (Dougie Freeman, page 4)
was a summer journalism fellow in 2020 and a staff
reporter for the Independent in 2020-2021. In 2023,
she graduated from Princetown University, where she
was the editor of the Daily Princetonian.
Jacob Smollen (Lifeguards at Herring Cove, page 46)
from Philadelphia was a summer journalism fellow
in 2024. He is a student at Brown University, where
he reports for the Brown Daily Herald and is
co-editor of the paper’s podcasting team.
Emma Madgic (Portuguese Festival, page 26) was a
summer journalism fellow in 2022. She graduated
from Brown University in 2023 and is a strategic
communications analyst in New York City.
Jack Styler (Freedom on horseback, page 34)
graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison in
2022 and was a staff reporter at the Independent in
2024. He is now a Fulbright fellow in Latvia.
Sophie Mann-Shafir (Kenny Dutra, page 40) was a
staff reporter at the Independent from 2022 to 2024.
A 2022 Wesleyan University graduate, she is now a
Fulbright fellow in Sicily.
Paul Sullivan (Dina Martina, page 16, and flea market
characters, page 29) began at the Independent as a staff
reporter in 2021. He became an associate editor after
graduating from Harvard in 2023. He is a Harvardwood
fellow, writing about queer places across the country.
Special thanks to Nancy Bloom, Elias Duncan, Marnie Crawford Samuelson, Emily Schiffer, and Nancy Silva for
photography and to Chris Kelly for design of this volume.
A CREATIVE WELCOME TO ALL
L-R. PAUL RESIKA, SELINA TRIEFF (1934-2015), SKY POWER
TOP: JOE DIGGS; BOTTOM, DANIELLE MAILER
BLANCHE LAZZELL (1878-1956); MIKE CARROLL
Berta Walker
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